1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a message tracking system and method, and more particularly relates to an electronic messaging tracking system and method that supports homogeneous and heterogeneous messaging environments and provides message tracking data to users through an internal or external network interface.
2. Description of the Background
Electronic messaging has become an important part of business, governmental, educational and personal communication. More and more often, messaging is being used for the transfer of mission critical information. For such applications, users prefer and often need to know whether a message has been delivered to the intended recipient, when the recipient received the message, the path the message has taken, the current location of the message, and other messaging information. Users and administrators also need to know if the delivery of an electronic message is being frustrated by a system error or other impeding mechanisms. A drawback of existing messaging systems is that such messaging information can only be determined if the unique identifier of the particular message is known. Typically users may know the approximate time a message was sent, the intended recipient of the message or the subject of the message, but do not know the identifier of the message. Moreover, some systems do not create a unique identifier for each message.
Another aspect of modem day messaging is the fact that users on a plurality of messaging environments can communicate with each other. However, such heterogeneous messaging capabilities complicates the tracking of messages. For example, message IDs and names of originators, recipients, and the like may be transformed along the way. This makes the tracking of messages particularly difficult and burdensome.
Another shortcoming of existing messaging systems is the failure of such systems to provide users with the ability to access a message tracking mechanism via their own computer and determine the path of an electronic message. An option that is sometimes available to users is the use of "Return Receipt," or other similar tag on an electronic message that is supposed to notify the sender of a message when the message is received. However, Return Receipt has a number of drawbacks. First, the sender typically must know ahead of time (i.e., before the message is being prepared) that acknowledgment of receipt is desired. Even if the sender makes such a determination before preparation of the message, Return Receipt often does not work when the message is sent to another messaging network. The sender is then left wondering whether the message was delivered successfully.